One thing we’re finding really mesmerizing about our gorgeous new Top 1000 U.S. names page is how easy it is to read across each line and compare the names of each gender that have the same rank. Some of the pairs seems perfectly matched — Sarah and Henry at Number 43, for instance, or Cadence and Skyler at Number 290 — whereas other equally-ranked pairs feel discordant.

We can’t help thinking, as we survey the list, which pair we’d pick if we had a baby girl and a baby boy and had to choose their names from the same line.

But we’re really more interested in finding out which pair you’d pick, if you had to choose names for your only daughter and only son from the same popularity rank? And why? Do you really like both names equally, or do you simply think they make the most balanced set?

Here’s the link again to the new Top 1000 page: http://nameberry.com/search/popular_names

Then, by the time we did have a boy, I decided I really wanted to use a family name — Joseph, if you’re curious — instead.

And when we had our third child and second son, it seemed I knew too many Henrys.

There’s a Henry my youngest son’s age who lives across the street from us. One a little older down the street. And one a bit younger, a friend of my son’s, around the corner.

I still love the name, a strong yet stylish classic. And yet while I feel that it’s a favorite that got away, I wouldn’t use it for a baby now because it seems there are too many Henrys in my neighborhood, my town, my life.

Asher is back on top! The hot biblical name has reclaimed the crown as Number One boys’ name from Finn, which snatched it last year.

Declan, an Irish choice that flirted with the Number One spot on Nameberry throughout 2013, finished at Number Two.

Finn’s star may be flickering, but waiting in the wings is Finn‘s understudy Flynn, another Irish name that was brought to widespread notice by the young son of supermodel MirandaKerr and actor Orlando Bloom.

Our popularity lists are tabulated by ranking the unique page views each name attracts out of the over 20 million total views of our baby name pages in 2013.

George vaulted halfway up our boys’ popularity list for 2013, thanks to the naming of the little British PrinceGeorgeAlexanderLouis. George went from Number 92 for the first half of the year all the way up to Number 56 at the year’s three-quarter mark.

The other boys’ name in the news making a strong showing on our list is Kieran, which attracted some controversy after it was chosen for the newly-adopted African-American grandson of MittRomney. The Irish Kieran means “little dark one.”

But most names make our popularity list thanks to the interest of parents considering them for their babies. The list tallies which boys’ names attracted the most views among the 14 million visits to our name pages for the first nine months of 2013.